Comment 17 for bug 174283

I think we all want to keep the "philosophy of *nix" alive and well;
without it, we probably wouldn't even have Ubuntu today. And we all
want to make Ubuntu better and more useful; we don't want it to
stagnate and become irrelevant. And we'd hope to gain more users and
build community along the way.

But what exactly is the philosophy of Unix? Is the real philosophy of
Unix to take no precautions against simple mistakes that anyone, even
the most experienced user, can make? Mistakes that can have
catastrophic consequences?

Unix is a great foundation, but it isn't rooted in goodness towards
others. But Ubuntu is intended to be. Personally, I'm thankful that
I don't always get what I deserve, because I'd be in bad shape if I
did. Just as we should be forgiving to each other, so should the
systems we design be forgiving to their users. That doesn't mean
having endless popup boxes; in a case like this, it's a simple fix for
a huge payoff. And what's the downside? Non-compliance with a man
page or an old tradition? We can change both of those. We have the
technology. :)